I was incredibly motivated today when I came across a woman on youtube doing depression era recipes. She is 94 years old and sharing the recipes of her childhood. Check her out here. She has even written a cookbook and I cannot wait to get my hand on it.
A simple search of depression era recipes will pull up tons of modern publications emphasizing a rebirth of depression era frugality. Too often we forget that every purchase we make is hard earned money. I hate nothing more then unpacking my groceries to find the same thing in my fridge, or even worse expired foods I never even opened.
There are so many valuable lessons we can learn from the depression. Home ever after, a homemaking ezine even made a week long depression era menu, and had this to say about the recipes of the depression.
Great Depression cooking focused on cheap food, substitutions, and making do with what you had. We can learn a lot from the great homemakers of the past by finding original Great Depression recipes, recorded and passed down the generations, and even adapting them to make some of our own.
By learning the Great Depression recipes that have survived for more than 70 years, we can learn to think creatively and improvise to improve our frugality. The homemakers and parents during the Great Depression had the same uncertainty and financial worries as we do today, but they were able to pull together, share knowledge, and find ways to make it work.
I am challenging myself during the week of the 21st, to cook only depression era dinners and take a look at how that compares financially to our normal food budget.
I plan to buy some depression era cookbooks, and later this year once I am done with my course, I will expand this challenge to include all meals for one week. Baked from scratch, all depression era recipes. I think it will be a very educating experience.
In a world where our economy is facing more struggles daily we have nothing to lose, and any knowledge we can gain about frugal living can only serve to help our financial situations.
So will you take this challenge with me? One week 7 dinners.
3 comments:
If I can remember I will do this with you! Im curious how it will work out with using european prices.
I am interested to see as well. One thing I think is cool is a lot of recipes are based around potatoes and onions, which seem to be the only produce not sky high at the moment.
To day I paid 1,25 for a head of lettuce I wanted to cry. And 95 cents for a cucumber. I never realized the prices went so high in winter, I mean in summer lettuce was 60 cents tops and cucumber 35 cents.
So I limited myself to carrots, lettuce, and cucumber. But I did luck out as strawberries were on sale for 50 cents woo hoo.
I really want to teach myself canning. lol. So I can stock up in summer and on season produce and ride out till the next season. I think it would be a fun hobby :)
We are paying the same for lettuce!! I can not believe it either. I am having a hard time finding decent fresh veggies here. In the summer I prefer germanys fruit section..you can get way more strawberries for less there.
Dutch food is also based on dang potatoes!lol
I also want to learn how to can..however the cost has stopped me..unlike back home where you pick everything up at a thrift, you have to buy it all new here and it's costly! I need to check out what it is in germany.
Have you seen what Kitchenaids cost here? I bawled me eyes out when I had to leave mine behind. They are 500 euros on up..back home I paid under 200 for a new one!
Do you have space outdoors? last year I actually had a container garden. I have a slightly big patio but with a small amount of dirt on the side..no room to grow anything. So I bought a bunch of buckets and grew cucumbers,tomatoes,eggplant and bell peppers. I had some friends send over some seeds and now I am going to grow sweet banana peppers:)
It's a challenge for sure to keep our grocery bill low but Im slowly doing it!
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